Sheeran: Calling out the delayers

Tuesday

May 27, 2014 at 1:40 AM

By Kristen SheeranMcClatchy-Tribune News Service

The steady accumulation of recent landmark climate reports is drawing a new form of pushback: not denial, but delay. In a world where denial has no scientific basis, delay provides a fig leaf of legitimacy. But actions speak louder than words and by this metric, delay and denial are indistinguishable.The latest assessment, the Third National Climate Assessment, raises an obvious question: with so much evidence, why has there been no action? In my home state of Oregon, warming is projected to threaten our iconic forests and the industries they support, and reduce fresh water available for agriculture and industry through declining snow pack. Sea level rise and inundation pose threats to homes and business throughout the Northwest, where ocean acidification (another sad consequence of climate change) is already imperiling our fishing industries. You'd think people would be convinced, but some still find creative ways to rationalize their inertia."Delayers" often profess agreement with the scientific consensus and support for climate action, at least in theory. Voices like Bjorn Lomborg, Roger Pielke Jr. and others at the Breakthrough Institute have pioneered this tactic, which establishes credibility and grants entrance into a mainstream media increasingly closed to the denial of basic science. But after token acknowledgement of the problem, a litany of excuses for inaction begins, often on economic grounds. At its heart, the delayer argument is to wait: for better technology, for other countries to act first, for greater scientific certainty or even for other problems to be solved first, like poverty or inequality or growth (as if we can only tackle one problem at a time).None of the standard delayer excuses hold up against the most current scientific and economic analyses. For example, new evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that addressing climate change is practical and affordable. The report explicitly recognized that effective policies in some countries have already started to decouple economic growth from emissions growth, meaning economic growth need not be compromised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Other countries are already acting. In fact, according to a 2013 World Bank study, about 20 percent of world emissions are already covered by some form of carbon price. Even China has a pilot program underway. Far from acting alone, the United States is actually trailing other developed nations.Some say that we should wait for technologies to make it easier and cheaper to reduce emissions in the future. But these voices might need a quick history lesson. Large-scale research and development funding, as well as nurturing policies and incentives, have shaped the pace and direction of now-ubiquitous technologies like the semi-conductor and the Internet. With the right set of carbon policies, the transition to renewable energy and greater energy efficiency can be just as fast, affordable and widespread.Meanwhile, waiting is a highly risky option that will only make it more expensive to deal with the impacts of climate change in the future. The IPCC said restricting warming to 2 degrees C means we will need to more than triple the global share of low-carbon energy. So we don't have a lot of time to wait for technology to appear out of thin air.The recommendations of the IPCC are uncontroversial in the scientific space, as they represent a global consensus of experts. Economists agree that carbon emissions have a social cost, while in much of the world the real carbon price is still zero or even negative, due to fossil fuel subsidies. A shift is needed, and there are many options for encouraging the change. A price on carbon is the most economically efficient way to reduce emissions. But this requires broad regulatory changes. Failing that, an effective plan B is to use rules based on the social cost of carbon to spur increases in efficiency, technological research and development, and clean energy investment.Even incremental action is a smarter economic decision than doing nothing. The IPCC has made it abundantly clear that delay will result in higher costs, and the National Climate Assessment shows us where those costs will hit. In delaying action, we will pay both in the form of direct climate impacts, and in higher costs to reduce emissions, once we finally get serious about doing so.Delayers seem to be trying to paint themselves as rational, middle-of-the road voices, neither deniers nor activists. But when it comes to the actions we sorely need to take, the delayers and deniers are both standing in the way.Kristen A. Sheeran is an economist, vice president of knowledge systems at Ecotrust and director of the economics for Equity & Environment Network. Readers may write to her at E3 Network, c/o Ecotrust, 721 NW 9th Avenue, Suite 200, Portland, Ore. 97209; website: www.e3network.org.

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